Installerless installation on OSX?

[Troy Rollins]

On Apr 13, 2006, at 11:11 AM, Graham Samuel wrote:

> I want to distribute a structurally simple RR-developed application  
> to Mac OSX users (it's the standalone itself and a couple of sample  
> folders). In testing, all I've done is to copy the app (which we  
> all know is really a folder) to somewhere convenient on the user's  
> hard disk. The user then double-clicks and that's it. Is there  
> anything wrong with this strategy? Why do people have installers  
> and .dmg files if so? I sense that one reason might be that the  
> machine potentially has many users, all but one of whom won't have  
> administrator privileges - as I'm not in this situation myself, I  
> don't really know.

An "installer" on OSX is usually not required, and is also considered  
bad form. Unless you really need it (like for general system  
modifications, installing servers, or installing things as root),  
leave it out. User's prefer that.

A DMG on the other hand is a mark of a more professional app, IMO.  
Consider it an elegant delivery vehicle, which is not an installer,  
but instead a container for a pristine copy of your application,  
which is simply copied from the disk image to the user's hard drive.  
The fact that you can also use them to display license agreements and  
the like give you the presentation capabilities of an installer,  
without the user needing to run some application to get things onto  
their system and ready for use.

I use this:
<http://www.mindvision.com/filestorm.asp>

It lets you make nice DMGs for everyday, and actual OSX installers  
when you really need one.
--
Troy
RPSystems, Ltd.
http://www.rpsystems.net